February 27 Friday – Sam wrote from Philadelphia to William Dean Howells:
To-night in Baltimore, to-morrow afternoon & night in Washington, & my four-months platform campaign is ended at last. It has been a curious experience. It has taught me that Cable’s gifts of mind are greater & highter than I had suspected. But—
February 28 Saturday – Sam and Cable read at the Congregational Church, Washington, D.C.
Note: Fatout gives figures from Pond’s cashbook, listing $789 as the take from this reading [Circuit 218]. Thus ended the “Twins of Genius” tour: total gross receipts, $46,201, from which Cable’s salary and expenses took more than $20,000. Cable earned $6,750, Sam approximately $15,000, and Pond’s commissions “a modest $2500 to $3000” [228].
February 3 Tuesday – Sam and Cable gave a second reading at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, Illinois. From the Chicago Tribune, Feb. 3:
February 4 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Chicago to Livy:
February 5 Thursday – Sam wrote from South Bend, Indiana to Livy:
Livy dear, we are grinding out the days pretty fast, now that we are at last fairly into the last month & unquestionably on the homestretch. Major Pond [James] is with us, now. He wanted to send his brother Edward, but we needed an expert, not a novice.
He also told of the Jan. 31 argument with Cable over traveling on Sunday (see Jan. 31 entry).
February 6 Friday – In the afternoon, Sam wrote from Layfayette, Indiana to Livy:
February 7 Saturday – Sam got up at 7 AM and took a train to Indianapolis, Indiana. On the train he wrote to Livy, explaining how black coffee made him “cheerful, & easy, & confidential & conversational with the audience,” but it didn’t protect him from “disastrous lapses of memory which come of over-fatigue.” Sam was counting the days now till he would be home, “at half past 3 on a Sunday morning Feb. 22!” [MTP].
February 8 Sunday – Sam wrote from Indianapolis to Livy. He blamed Cable for his own supposed shortcomings:
It is Cable’s fault that I have done inferior reading all this time. He has hogged so much of the platform-time that I have always felt obliged to hurry along at lightning speed in order to keep the performance within bounds; but now I take my own time, & give 25 minutes to pieces which formerly occupied but 15.
February 9 Monday – In Indianapolis, Sam wrote Livy a letter full of indignation and disgust with George W. Cable. He told of Cable interrupting an anecdote at a Saturday evening reception to tell him he was leaving (due to the Sabbath).
January 1 Thursday – George Cable wrote to his wife, Lucy, perhaps in wee hours of the morning, of the performance a few hours before in Paris, Kentucky:
We have just finished a delightful evening on the platform before a hearty, quick-witted audience that laughed to tears and groans at Mark’s fun & took my more delicate points before I could fairly reach them.
January 10 Saturday – In the evening, Sam and Cable gave a second performance in Mercantile Library Hall , St. Louis. The Post Dispatch, and the Daily Globe-Democrat gave the pair positive reviews [Railton]. Cardwell says the crowd was not good, and according to Ozias Pond, Saturday night was “not popular in St. Louis ‘with the better element’.” [Cardwell 37].
January 11 Sunday – Since Sam had decided back in 1866 or 1867 to put his Sandwich Islands Letters into a book, he understood the value of pre-selling books by running excerpts in popular newspapers or magazines. On this date the Chicago Times and the New York Tribune ran portions of Huck Finn [The Twainian, Mar. 1944 p4].
Sam wrote two letters from St. Louis to Livy. The expressed,
January 12 Monday – After another early rise to catch a 9:40 train, according to Ozias Pond’s diary, Sam was in a foul mood and attacked (and won) a battle with a window shutter at the Southern Hotel in St. Louis [Cardwell 41-2]. The troupe arrived in Quincy, Illinois in the afternoon.
January 13 Tuesday – Sam telegraphed from Quincy, Illinois to Charles Webster about the chapter to be given to Thorndike Rice of the North American Review. Sam had given orders to Rice that if Webster had not been heard from within a day then Bromfield could leave him a chapter of Huck Finn.
January 14 Wednesday – Delayed by a snowstorm, and “Long past midnight,” Sam wrote from Keokuk, Iowa to Livy. He’d had “no time to turn around, for 2 or 3 days” and so was behind in his letters. He wrote poignantly of his mother and of Hannibal, and an old friend since childhood, Tom Nash. Nash had been deaf and dumb for 40 years and handed Sam a letter which he read and sent to Livy to keep.
January 15 Thursday – Cable rose at four in the morning to catch a train, reaching Burlington, Iowa at a quarter to seven. Sam stayed behind in Keokuk to spend more time with his mother, Jane Clemens [Turner, MT & GWC 88]. The Keokuk Gate City ran an article discussing Sam’s lectures and his greetings to his mother [Tenney 14].
January 16 Friday – Sam wrote from Chicago to Susy Clemens, thanking her for a letter and asking her to write “two or three times a week in Mamma’s place…What I’m after is to save her” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Orion, thanking him for a “perfect 24 hours there, with the sort of social activity which produces rest instead of fatigue” [MTP].
January 17 Saturday – Sam and Cable gave two more performances at the Central Music Hall in Chicago. Before the matinee performance, Sam wrote Livy:
January 18 Sunday – Sam finished the letter to Livy, writing in the morning and after breakfast adding to it at noon, when he wrote about the Chicago readings:
January – A chapter from Huck Finn, “Jim’s Investments, and King Sollermun,” ran in the Century Magazine for the January issue, pages 456-8 [Camfield, bibliog.]. Perhaps more immediately of influence was George W. Cable’s controversial essay in the same issue, “The Freedman’s Case in Equity,” which argued for full civil rights for the Negro.
January 19 Monday – Sam wrote from Chicago to Charles Webster, adding to the list of things he wanted progress reports on, including the weekly total of money received from Pond [MTP].
January 2 Friday – Sam wrote from Paris, Kentucky to Livy. He was sorry he’d missed going to a soldiers’ home in Cincinnati for General Franklin.
I froze to death all last night, & never once thought of Sam Dunham’s camel’s hair shirt—but I did think of it a couple of hours ago, & am very comfortable, now. I mean to lay it on the bed every night after this.
January 20 Tuesday – Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Opera House in Janesville, Wisconsin. Cable wrote home:
January 21 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Madison, Wisc. to Livy. He reported that it had been seven days since the thermometer had risen above zero; it was ten below at the time of his letter, but he was in his “bag, in bed, & unspeakably snug & comfortable.
January 22 Thursday – Sam and Cable gave a reading in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.
Sam wrote from St. Paul, Minn. to Charles Erskine Scott Wood, his old West Point friend, who evidently had asked Sam why he never poked fun at Jews.